The present application is directed to electrical connectors for toner cartridges in an image forming device and, more particularly, to electrical connectors that include a housing and a circuit board that are attached to a body of a cartridge.
Laser image forming devices include one or more photoconductive members that are generally cylindrical with a smooth surface. The photoconductive members receive a uniform electrostatic charge over the surface and rotate past a scanning laser that locally discharges the photoconductive member to form an electrostatic latent image representative of the outputted image.
Toner is originally stored within removable cartridges. The cartridges are connected to the device such that the toner can be moved to develop the latent image formed on the photoconductive member. Electrostatic forces attract the toner to the areas of the photoconductive members that have been discharged by the scanning laser. The toner images formed on the photoconductive members are then transferred either directly or indirectly to a media sheet. A mono-color image may be formed by a single toner layer that is transferred to the media sheet. A multi-color image may be formed by two or more toner layers of different colors that are transferred in an overlapping arrangement to the media sheet. Ultimately, the toner is fused to the media sheet to form the final printed sheet.
The cartridges are removable from the image forming device and may be replaced as necessary, such as upon depletion of the toner. The cartridges should include an electrical connection to engage and/or communicate with the image forming device upon insertion of the cartridge into the device. The electrical connection should be constructed to facilitate the connection between the cartridge and the device.